`Super Santas` 1985 Donations Top $336 Million

The major American philanthropists - the country`s ``super Santas`` - have donated more than $336 million in the past year to hospitals, museums, universities and other groups.

Most of the major contributions to art, science, scholarship and the humanities are made to traditional institutions, according to the December issue of Town & Country, which chronicles these gifts.

One of the most unusual philanthropies is the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Theater, part of an arts complex that Winston ``Red`` Blount and his wife, Carolyn, are planning on their 250-acre estate near Montgomery.

Blount has invested almost $22 million in the Palladian-style red brick 750-seat Festival Theater, designed by his son Tom, an Atlanta architect. It opens this month.

The complex also houses a smaller theater, two rehearsal halls, offices, a patron`s lounge, and costume, scenery and prop shops.

``My wife and I had dreamed of making a gift of land to the state of Alabama for some purpose,`` Blount said. ``When this Shakespeare thing came along, it clicked.``

Blount turned the family gravel business into an international construction and manufacturing corporation.

Among the more traditional givers, the super Santas can be divided into three categories - individuals, foundations and bequests.

Only one of them topped Blount. He was Laurance S. Rockefeller, who gave $36.25 million to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City to help build the Rockefeller Research Laboratories.

The Rockefeller family has long been involved with Memorial Sloan- Kettering and the new facility will be named for Laurance Rockefeller`s father, John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Third place among the mega-givers was a tie between Carroll and Milton Petrie, who gave $10 million to Memorial Sloan-Kettering to construct and equip the hospital`s Magnetic Resonance Imaging Unit for diagnosis and treatment, and Mary Katherine Hughes Trigg and Charles Henry Trigg, who gave $10 million to Southern Methodist University.

The Petries also gave $6 million to United Cerebral Palsy.

Another Rockefeller made the list of big givers - David Rockefeller gave $2.5 million to the New York Public Library.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering was the recipient of more money than any other single institution. Aside from the Rockefeller and Petrie gifts, the cancer center received $5 million from Benno C. Schmidt, $6 million from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, $5 million from the Ann Burnett and Charles Tandy Foundation, and a bequest of $5 million from Nathan Cummings.

The top foundation gift was the $8 million donated to Texas A&M University by the Ella C. McFadden Charitable Trust, while the W.K. Kellogg Foundation gave approximately $17 million to be split among five educational recipients, and distributed another $3 million in bequests.

The most famous name among the foundation givers - the Paul Newman foundation gave $250,000 to Catholic Relief Services.